Don't look now, but PGA tees off Thursday

It seems like it was just a mere 14 days ago that Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland eagled the 16th hole and then repeated the feat at the 18th hole at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club to jump out to a 54-hole, six-stroke lead at the British Open. Well, that's because it was. And yet with the mere blink of an eye, I'm here to tell you that the 96th edition of the PGA Championship tees it up in just five days at the Valhalla Country Club in Louisville.

The Masters in contested in mid-April and then the United States Open is held during Father's Day weekend in June. One month later, the British Open is held at one of nine links golf courses on the rotation throughout the United Kingdom. Historically, the PGA Championship is played during mid-August, four weeks after the conclusion of the British Open. However, in Ryder Cup years when the matches are contested in northern climates such as Wales, four years ago, or the Scottish Highlands, like this year, the PGA is moved up one week on the calendar.

So while the dust has barely settled following Rory McIlroy's triumphant victory in the Open Championship, it's now time for the big-name pros to prepare themselves for the season's fourth and final major, the PGA Championship. Jason Dufner is the defending champion following last year's supernatural ball striking performance over the final nine holes.

The PGA Championship returns to Valhalla for the third time. A Jack Nicklaus design that first opened in 1986, Valhalla is a meat-and-potatoes, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, parkland-style course that plays long and hard. Valhalla can be stretched out to 7,458 yards while playing to a par of 72. There has been a lot of rain in the Louisville area of late, so you can anticipate the course will play soft, meaning it will favor the long hitters with their errant tee shots that won't bound as far into the trees. It also means that the grasses in the rough are pretty hardy from all the precipitation of the last month. Valhalla should favor the game's big bombers over the control players.

Ten years after the course opened it hosted its first major, namely the 1996 PGA Championship. Kenny Perry, a native Kentuckian, was the leader in the clubhouse after shooting a 68 in the final round while Mark Brooks was still out on the course with a chance to tie. Brooks made a clutch birdie on the 18th hole for the tie and went on to win a sudden-death playoff over Perry. Four years later the PGA Championship was back at Valhalla and the course as well as fans of the game got to see one of the all-time classic conclusions of a golfing major.

Tiger Woods arrived at Valhalla with a two-in-a-row major winning streak, having won the 2000 U.S. Open in a runaway at Pebble Beach and the British Open in similar fashion at St. Andrews. Woods was 24 years old, had four major titles to his name, and was looking to add at fifth. After three rounds of play, Woods was atop a no-name leader board that included Scott Dunlap, Greg Chalmers, J.P. Hayes and European Tour regular Bob May. May caught and then took a brief lead over Tiger on the final nine. Both players were tied after 17 holes and both of them birdied the 18th hole. In the three-hole aggregate playoff, Woods birdied the first hole and went on to beat May by one stroke.

In 2004 Valhalla hosted the Senior PGA Championship won by Hale Irwin by one shot over Jay Haas. It would also be the venue for the 2011 Senior PGA that was captured by 61-year-old Tom Watson. It was Watson's sixth and final senior major win as he beat David Eger in a sudden-death playoff.

Between those two senior majors was perhaps Valhalla's neatest moment as a championship course of note as it hosted the 2008 Ryder Cup Matches. Paul Azinger was the American coach and the United States team played loosely with a bunch of offbeat personalities such as Boo Weekley, J.B. Holmes, Anthony Kim and Chad Campbell. The end result was an entertaining and dynamic series of matches with Team USA prevailing over Europe by a 16? to 11? margin.

Valhalla is one of those modern-era golf courses that has a major championship pedigree along with the Atlanta Athletic Club, Whistling Straits and Hazeltine. Part of the reason it gets major tournaments is because it is owned by the PGA of America, but it also has undergone some important changes, including those to the putting surfaces, to strengthen it. A good judge of a course's strength is its litany of past champions, and with Tiger Woods, Hale Irwin and Tom Watson on various perpetual trophies, Valhalla has done a nice job of identifying the game's top performers.

This year has been kind to young past major champions. Bubba Watson won his second career major at the Masters in April, Martin Kaymer won his second career major at the U.S. Open in June, and Rory McIlroy added a third major title to his trophy room in July. If past form holds, the winner of the PGA Championship a week from Sunday evening will be someone who has already achieved major success.

Of course, Rory goes into the PGA as the favorite. Although he is from Northern Ireland, it's pretty obvious that he prefers to play American-style courses that are long and relatively soft. His pair of eight-stroke runaway major wins at Congressional and Kiawah are a valid case in point. If he doesn't have too much of a success hangover from two weeks ago he has to be considered one of the frontrunners. Nonetheless, it's really hard to win back-to-back majors, and McIlroy may not be up to that difficult challenge.

Valhalla should favor last year's U.S. Open champ, Justin Rose. He's a power player who has a tendency to perform well at tough courses. My personal favorite would be Adam Scott, a wonderful striker of the ball. A Rose or a Scott win would be the second major for either golfer.

The 96th annual PGA Championship commences this coming Thursday at the Valhalla Country Club in Louisville, Kentucky. This will be the third time Valhalla has hosted a PGA. The last time the PGA was contested there, a young Tiger Woods won to cement his status as the game's dominant performer. That was a very long 14 years ago.